Clan Wyzerd Skitterkin Gallery and Lore (Patreon)

Every month BattleYak Miniatures will release a new Battle Pack, featuring 3D printable miniature files! The January Battle Pack is the Clan Wyzerd Skitterkin, a horde of fiendish rat-people wielding arcane technology! This pack includes modular weapons, tons of customization options, bonus figures, and more!

Become a Patron now and gain access to the Clan Wyzerd Skitterkin here!

Enjoy this gallery of the Clan Wyzerd Skitterkin miniatures and a glimpse into the story behind the faction!

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We have eyes and we have nerveses
We have claws and we have teeth
You'll all get what you deserveses
When we rise from underneath

-Lyrics found scratched into wall of abandoned dwelling in inner-city district following mass disappearance

The skitterkin are a vicious breed of highly intelligent rat-like humanoids, lurking in the shadows of other civilizations. They dwell in numerous distinct clans and cabals, hidden from sight in deep burrows and buried ruins far below the realms of the surface. The skitterkin of Clan Wyzerd employ advanced arcane technology and fiendish creativity to augment their forces, launching devastating attacks upon the people of the surface in their never-ending campaign to dominate the world.

The skitterkin race are a fractious and divided people, the various clans constantly warring not just with other civilizations but amongst themselves for supremacy. The skitterkin race as a whole worships a monstrous deity known as Shogg-Kathak, the Rat King, described by verminous clerics as an enormous rat with eight terrible heads. Each head is a distinct being with its own identity and eccentricities, though paradoxically they are all united as a single entity. Each of the skitterkin clans tends to favor one head about the others, and Clan Wyzerd pays greatest honor to the head Shogg-Wyze, the Master of Mechanisms, the Rat King's incarnation of scheming creativity and mastery over the industry of ruin.

The heaving hordes of the skitterkin armies are made up of low-ranking vermin, barely above the beaten slave-stock that toil in hidden burrows and foundries far from the light of the surface. Gutterblades form the backbone of every clan's military forces, and those of Clan Wyzerd enjoy the fruits of their master's creativity, in the form of advanced weaponry and heavy augmetic armor. The powered armor of the Gutterblades enhances the wiry strength and agility of the skitterkin, providing them with increased protection without hampering their natural movements. Skitterkin that distinguish themselves with particular savagery may even earn fully-mechanical wychiron limbs incorporating deadly weaponry.

Clan Wyzerd uses a rare mineral known as wychstone to fuel all of their wicked creations, from the augmetic armor and limbs of the Gutterblades, to far deadlier inventions. Formed from stagnant magic that has crystallized into a solid state, wychstone radiates vast quantities of toxic magical ether, making it a highly volatile and dangerous reagent in sorcery and arcano-tech. The skitterkin prize this stone with an almost religious fervor, believing it to be the mineralized blood of their deity, the Rat King. While deadly to most races, the skitterkin seem to thrive off of the poisonous energies that wychstone radiates. Clan Wyzerd has developed ways of alloying the mineral into useful metals like the highly durable wychiron used to craft their weapons and armor. Raw wychstone is used as a power source in the unstable arcano-tech reactors that they utilize to power their most fiendish instruments of war.

The elite troops of Clan Wyzerd are grafted into mighty suits of Verminator armor (also called Practically Dreadrat Armor), heavy mechanized suits reinforced with thick metal plates and powered by wychstone reactors. Verminator armor turns the fierce elite skitterkin of Clan Wyzerd into techno-enhanced killing machines, amplifying their strength and reflexes. Mutilator model Verminator suits bear vicious close-combat weapon, making them radically efficient at tearing apart the enemy in close-quarters.

While insular as all skitterkin clans are, Clan Wyzerd will occasionally strike bargains and forge alliances with other clans. In such instances, the Wych-Engineers of Clan Wyzerd will reluctantly outfit agents of other clans with advanced arcano-tech weaponry, creating a fearsome overlap of specialties. The Shadowkin agents of Clan Ninzil, expert infiltrators and assassins, have their natural talents for stealth augmented to an unbelievable degree with Clan Wyzerd arcano-tech, enabling them to become virtually invisible when using the Shadowskin stealth-suit. Shadowkin snipers also employ the specially-crafted Shadowstone long-rifle, a weapon capable of firing wychstone bullets that can pierce virtually any defense at impossible distances. Death lurks in every shadow when the Shadowkin are given the command to slay.

The origins of the skitterkin are connected with other beast-humanoid races found throughout the world, and lie in an era of history all but forgotten. Long ago the eldarch race enjoyed mastery of the world so complete, the forces of life itself bent to their will. Through their use of life-shaping magics, they could call entire races into existence as an artist might create sculptures or paintings. The eldarch's mastery over the world ended during a period of calamity known as the Age of Hunger, and much of their ancient golden age civilization was utterly destroyed. Yet while many of their glorious cities crumbled and were swallowed by the earth, examples of their mastery of sorcery survived in those buried ruins, the magic twisted and stagnating, mutating all that it came into contact with.

In one ancient lost city of the eldarch, life-shaping magic had been the prime focus of its inhabitants, and was present in vast and highly refined quantities when the city fell. As the polluted life-shaping magic bled out from the ruined city, it tainted the surrounding wilderness, turning a verdant forest paradise into a diseased mire, the broken eldarch citadel at its poisoned heart. The multitudes of verminous life in the region, rats and insects and all manner of crawling, gnawing creatures, were imbued with the tainted life-shaping magic, growing larger, smarter, and wickedly hostile. From this cauldron of confluences, the skitterkin race emerged, dominating and eradicating the other magically-generated races until nothing of them remained.

Sometime during their dark evolution in the shadowy underbelly of the world, the tainted creation magic that birthed the skitterkin wore away at the very fabric of reality itself, exposing them to the influence of a dark and terrible entity from beyond the mortal realm. This creature is the being that the skitterkin have come to worship as Shogg-Kathak, the Rat King. Already inclined to ruinous impulses due to their tainted origin, the patronage of a malign extra-dimensional deity cemented the destiny of the skitterkin race as one of wickedness, pain, and misery. Seizing the fallen eldarch city as their capitol of Blighthaven, the skitterkin race began their descent into becoming the sprawling nightmarish blight upon the world they are today.

The chittering hordes of Clan Wyzerd are utterly devoted to the industry of ruin and the domination of the world, serving their dark master's will with all of their feverish energy.

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Enjoy the latest release from Battle Yak Miniatures and have a happy new year! Check out the Battle Yak Miniatures online store for past release, and become a Patron for new miniature releases every month in 2021!